Rob proposed to change the order of agenda items 5 & 6. Agenda item 6 was discussed first followed by item 5. The RIPE 34 meeting participants approved the agenda.

- 3. - Minutes RIPE 33

The RIPE 33 plenary session minutes were approved.

- 4. - From the chair

Rob announced that a candidate was found for the RIPE NCC Managing Director function. The candidate was found by the RIPE NCC Executive Board with support from the RIPE NCC workers council. The current state of affairs was that the final details of a contract were being discussed.

The new Managing Director would be announced and introduced at the RIPE NCC Annual General Meeting on 19 October 1999.

- 5. - RIPE NCC Status Report

http://www.ripe.net/meetings/ripe/ripe-34/pres/ncc-status/

Statistics ---------- New LIRs: Mirjam reported that at in Q1 of 1999 the RIPE NCC registered two new members per calendar day, twice as many as were expected and forecasted. It has slowed down in Q2 but the RIPE NCC was still registering approximately one and a half new member per day. The new members tend to be small or grow slower than members in the past therefore the overall workload is not increasing in proportion to the growth of members.

The RIPE NCC reported that some LIRs had been closed. This has happened for a number of reasons such as an LIR going out of business or LIRs that have not paid their membership fees. The RIPE NCC has closed down 136 members to date and they have been removed from the RIPE NCC accounting system. These LIRs no longer receive services from the RIPE NCC. A long process is undertaken by the RIPE NCC before the decision is made to close down a registry. The present process of collecting outstanding payments has proven successful in decreasing the outstanding payments.

The RIPE database receives on average 5 queries per second and 10 updates per minute. During the DB-WG bulk updates which slow down the updating process enormously was discussed. This problem needs to be tackled and is a topical issues in the DB-WG. The number of objects in the RIPE database has exceeded two and a half million.

The RIPE NCC has began allocating addresses from 213 address space. 62/8 addresses are also being assigned. Allocations from 62/8 had slowed down somewhat at the beginning of the year but has increased in Q2 with larger members requesting address space from this range for larger contiguous blocks.

Overall the RIPE NCC has allocated approx. 70 million addresses. This figure would align with the allocations made by the other RIRs when comparing the ratio of members to the amount of allocated addresses in each region.

Services -------- Mirjam reported that the RIPE community is crucial to the development of services provided by the RIPE NCC. The feedback more or less determines the yearly Activity Plan of the organisation. The RIPE NCC has produced the Activities & Expenditure Plan (document ripe-197) for the operating year 2000. The Executive Board has reviewed the document and will present it to the membership at the upcoming AGM meeting.

Mirjam outlined the main activities of the Activities & Expenditure Plan. In summary, the main structural change proposed in the Activity Plan is introduction of Membership Services. The Membership Services are comprised of Registration Services and the Test Traffic measurements which are only available to RIPE NCC members.

Co-ordination Activities are open to the Internet community at large; such as the maintenance of the RIPE Database and the organisation of the RIPE meetings.

Two new activities have been listed: Routing Information Services and Routing Registry Consistency. These projects were initially started in 1999 however more resources will be spent on them in 2000.

Details: Paula Caslav has left the RIPE NCC. Nurani Nimpuno has been employed by the RIPE NCC as Registration Services Manager.

The average response time for address space and AS number requests has been 2 to 3 days. The RIPE NCC has worked on automating procedures in Registration Services. Therefore a increase of hostmaster staff is not foreseen, even though the membership and number of requests have increased.

The RIPE NCC has began allocating IPv6 address space. This was achieved through extremely good co-operation among the RIRs. The RIRs have worked together evaluating requests, exchanging experiences, information and opinions to ensure the same assignment and evaluation criteria is used in all regions. The RIRs also have good co-operation with 6bone. No major failures or major open policy issues were reported.

13 LIR Training Courses were delivered since the last RIPE meeting in May 1999. Mirjam explained the training course policy to the people attending the plenary session. She asked that members notify the RIPE NCC in advance if any persons registered for the course will not attend. This way the RIPe NCC can offer the place to individuals which could not attend the course for reasons of capacity. The RIPE NCC has been working on the current course material to improve the presentation and reference material. The presentation material has revised and a more detailed reference handout is planned for the attendees. The revised courses will be delivered starting January 2000.

The database department has been working mainly on re-implementation, but also concentrated on keeping the existing code running. The RIPE NCC has a fully redundant server configuration on one machine and also another server which is running a near real-timer, so that a swap over can be made if necessary. DB/MRTG have done everything to improve the database software for sending in updates.

Good results and positive feedback were reported for the database consistency project. The consistency within the database has improved. The RIPE NCC has improved the syntax checks and suggested automated changes where possible. The RIPE NCC is still working on setting up redundant servers with other Regional Internet Registries.

Mirjam explained that the RIPE NCC had commenced work on the Routing Information Services project outlined in the Activity and Expenditures Plan. The RIPE NCC will collect and store routing data, current and past/historical, to allow network operators to locate possible problems within the network or within a specific AS at a certain time. The RIPE NCC has started testing and a published document on the design is planned after the RIPE meeting.

It was reported that the Routing Registry Consistency project will receive more attention. Initially the RIPE NCC wil concentrate on route/origin authentication and not on the policies in the autnum object. The RIPE community has made it clear to the RIPE NCC that this is the most pressing issue at the moment.

Mirjam explicitly mentioned the good co-operation experienced with the other Regional Internet Registries. On a daily basis operational information and support is exchanged between the RIRs as much as possible. This ensures consistency in criteria applied in the regions. Co-operation has mainly taken place in 3 topics: IPv6, ICANN/ASO and database consistency. The RIRs plan to transfer data that is currently registered in the ARIN database (for historical reasons) to the regions that the networks are operated in.

Mirjam welcomed Kyoko and Fabrina, the APNIC staff that visited the RIPE meeting.

Q: Enzo Valente asked a question with regards to the database. He stated that there is a difference between the ARIN and RIPE database and that the RIPE NCC had made a lot of work on the RIPE database. If Europe succeeds with this database why not offer it for free use with regards to other databases.

A: the RIPE database it is there for free. Everyone can use/grep the code and implement it. It mainly is a matter of history. The communities are used to certain different formats. We have tried over the years to work together to improve that situation. The code has always been free has been offered to other RIRs.

- 6. - ICANN/ASO

Rob explained that ICANN/ASO had been on the RIPE meeting agenda for at least two years but that developments have reached a new phase.

Mirjam Kuehne provided a short introduction regarding the current status of ICANN/ASO and the selection of Address Council members which was to take place during the plenary session.

She reported that ICANN had reviewed and accepted the proposal for a MoU-based Address Supporting Organisation submitted by the 3 RIRs at the ICANN Board meeting on 26 August 1999 in Santiago, Chile. The RIRs are now working on a MoU that the RIRs and ICANN could hopefully sign in October.

Other resolutions that ICANN made at their Santiago meeting include the continued support in the set-up of new registries for Africa and Latin America. They recommended and suggested that the ASO involve representatives in the ICANN structure as observers in the ASO.

Another resolution was passed based on information that certain parties did not fully agree with the ASO proposal as such and that certain issues were not properly addressed. ICANN tried to find a compromise and move forward to approve the proposal but at the same time tried to address the concerns of these organisations. This lead to the formation of an Ad Hoc Group. It is not quite clear yet what the exact terms of reference will be but the Ad Hoc Group will look into future numbering schemes to make them consistent specifically with regards to telephony and IP. It was felt that this would fall in between the PSO and ASO. Their work is expected to finish after one year and a report will be delivered to ICANN. This report could possibly suggest a change in structure of the ASO. The group will include representatives of businesses, including telecom operators and Internet service providers and trade organisations, the ASO Council, the ICANN Board, and other legitimately interested parties.

During the plenary session a discussion took place on how to select members for Address Council. Following the discussion the AC members would be selected as outlined in the following document published to the RIPE NCC members

http://www.ripe.net/info/ncc/asonomin.html

Mirjam reiterated some essential features of the proposed ASO structure:

- The structure must be open and transparent. - The functions have to be separated - It should be built on existing structures currently in place (bottom-up, industry self regulatory)

The structure of ASO includes having an annual General Assembly meeting and an Address Council. The different tasks and responsibilities for these different groups have been discussed in the LIR-WG. The meeting participants strongly agreed the need for open and transparent structures.

Mirjam stated that the communications (announcements, minutes, agendas) will be made public and that open mailing-lists will be created to get input from as many people as possible about the specific IP policy issues.

Mirjam reported that the LIR-WG discussed how policies are actually developed in the 3 regions, how everyone could participate and how new policies or changes could be suggested. It was reported that this is the role of the community and the RIRs to ensure policies are realistic and fair. The individuals selected for the Address Council and ICANN Board must not be staff members of any RIR. The proposal also states quite clearly that no ASO-appointed Director may serve simultaneously on the Address Council.

In the process of writing this proposal the RIRs tried to recognise and use the structures currently in place and make sure the structures were not duplicated. Existing open structures are proposed to build policy. This includes input from organisations that need to work with IP address space and that are affected by the policies.

Mirjam pointed out that participation is possible within the ICANN framework in addition to the proposed structure. Proposals for policy changes can also be submitted directly to the ASO if it is felt that the existing structures are not working or are not appropriate.

With regards to regional diversity, the ASO is asked to schedule their General Assembly meetings in different regions and hopefully hold them in conjunction with other meetings in order to minimise travel for the participants. The function of the General Assembly is that it is an open forum which mainly works electronically, but will also physically meet once every year. It is like a members meeting but open to all interested parties. It reviews Address Council operations and gives input to the ASO.

In short, Mirjam summarised the function of the Address Council as existing to oversee the whole policy developing process. They are there to make sure the process is open and transparent, fair and consistent and uses the criteria as set by ICANN and the Internet community. Mirjam stated that the Address Council and their duties are outlined in the Memorandum of Understanding that can be found on the RIPE NCC website at:

http://www.ripe.net/info/ncc/icann-mou-oct99.html

There had been an open call for nominations for the AC. And we were working to have a fair and open selection process for these candidates.

Mirjam clarified that the policy within the ASO is the same as it works now. We have to make sure that we integrate people that are part of the IP address world. This was discussed in the LIR-WG and that more activity is needed to make existing structures known. She also stated that many organisations were not aware that RIPE meetings were where these issues were discussed and where they should be if they want to participate.

It was reported that the ASO role is restricted to IP policies and that the registries are the organisations that continue to maintain the resources. The ASO is not there to tell the RIR staff how to do their work, but mainly to oversee the policy development and to report and provide advice to ICANN.

Address Council Selection -------------------------

The Address Council selection procedure was discussed in the LIR-WG, which is the open forum that discusses and defines policies in the RIPE NCC service region. The RIPE NCC chose to use the existing open processes for the selection of Address Council members. Therefore, the RIPE meeting plenary session was selected as it is the largest forum and everyone interested in this selection could participate. Mirjam and Rob stressed that it is an interim procedure. Within the ASO proposal and the draft MOU it specifies quite a long time frame and certain deadlines that are to be followed within the nomination and selection process. Due to time constraints set by the ICANN Board, the RIRs modified the procedure to select the initial Address Council. ICANN requested to have the directors from each region selected by November which called for the modification in the initial AC selection process. The procedure will be discussed in further detail in the LIR-WG and the formal procedure for the future can be outlined by the next RIPE meeting in February 2000.

Rob started the selection procedure with a word of wisdom. He stated that RIPE exists for 10 years now and the RIPE NCC has existed for 7 years. All policy making has been done on a consensus basis. Votes have never been taken, therefore we have no well established 'election' procedure. In light of this, Rob thought it best to replace the word election with selection.

Rob pointed out a few conclusions that were reached during the LIR-WG meeting on Wednesday, 22 September 1999. A Memorandum of Understanding exists and one of the requirements is to have an open and transparent regional forum for policy making in the IP address area. The conclusion was that the LIR-WG has played that role for 10 years already. He reported that 100% of the current consumers of IPv4 and IPv6 address space are covered. However, there may be other interest groups that have not been reached that have an interest in the future development of address policy but are not necessarily consumers of IP address space to date.

The conclusion was that we need a better out-reach programme to make sure that people are aware that this is the open and transparent forum as mentioned in the ICANN MOU with regards to ASO.

This ad-hoc selection procedure is based on the MOU draft version which describes that the policy making organisation i.e. the LIR-WG, puts a selection procedure in place. A small problem arose this year: the MOU has detailed timelines on how that should be done for example that a call for nominations should be at least 90 days before the selection procedure). The MOU had provisions for that, an article stated that a modified procedure could be followed to select the initial Address Council members. It was up to the LIR-WG to come up with a different, but open and transparent procedure.

The LIR Working Group should producer two results:

- come up with a proper selection procedure for the election (elections are held once a year).

- have in place a first draft of a selection procedure by the next RIPE meeting in February 2000.

At the RIPE meeting in May 2000 an agreed selection procedure should be in place. This will allow us to have proper elections for the next year.

The LIR Working Group could not conclude on a single process at such short notice to have during the plenary session. It discussed whether to conduct an election process by ballot or via the usual method: consensus building.

The LIR-WG discussed the terms the initial members should have: 1, 2 and 3 years. Some participants thought this would not be a well balanced procedure and proposed to give the members all a 1 year term. It was decided however not to do this as the first year is such an important year, and weakness could already emerge from day 1. Rob personally thought this was a good argument.

Consensus was reached during the plenary session that although the procedure was not perfect the candidates were good enough to be trusted for 3 years.

One specific requirement for selecting the Address Council members was that all 3 candidates should have a solid knowledge of IP addressing. Another valid argument proposed was that the 3 members should come from different industry backgrounds, at least one person from a commercial company and someone with an academic background.

Four candidates from the list of 8 were present during the plenary session. With regards to the profile criteria all 4 nominees attended RIPE meetings regularly. Rob proposed to shorten the list of 8 nominees to the 4 people present at the RIPE Meeting plenary session.

Following some discussion during the plenary session, consensus was reached: the 3 Address Council members were to be selected from the 4 candidates that were present that day.

Hans Petter Holen, Sabine Jaume, Daniele Bovio and Wilfried Woeber all gave a short introduction about themselves to the attendees and informed the attendees of their involvement with ICANN in the past.

Consensus was reached that the council members would run for a one year, two year and three year seat. It was agreed to hold the selection via a secret ballot. All people present at the plenary session were eligible to vote except for RIPE NCC staff.

The 3 chosen Address Council members were to decide amongst themselves the terms of office (1, 2 or 3 years).

150 votes were counted. Sabine Jaume, Wilfried Woeber and Hans Petter Holen were elected to the ASO Address Council. Congratulations were extended to the 3 new Address Council members.

Q: Bernard Tuy stressed that he thought it was very important resurrect the MBone WG. A: Joachim replied that he is not an MBone expert, he tried to find someone to give a short overview, but couldn't find anyone. During the next RIPE meeting an overview will definitely be given.

Joachim said that when Wilfried develops a Task Force to make this transition to RPSL, he has the support of the Routing Working Group and himself as chair. Ipv6 is obviously for many people not yet an issue, but it should definitely be delt with as well.

Wilfried stated that in the beginning it starts with the WG chairs, collaboration between the various working groups. However the chairs themselves cannot do all the legwork. They should therefore identify a set of individuals to become vocal point for some kind of interaction.

This short summary of the TLD-WG session was presented at the closing plenary session of RIPE 34. Please see the RIPE 34 TLD-WG Minutes (when available) for more detail.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Future of TLD WG

The WG was closed.

Now that CENTR is established, it appears to be the organisation which should best deal with most of the work areas belonging to the TLD WG. It is hoped that a CENTR working group will begin functioning soon and that it will meet at RIPE 35.

Some work areas appear to fall more naturally to the continuing RIPE DNS WG.

Work areas from the TLD-WG workplan were identified to be entrusted to DNS-WG and to CENTR, as shown below.

TLD-33.2 [Chair] Initiate discussion of issues arising around domain objects in RIPE database. Some discussion has taken place between interested parties, especially RIPE-NCC, CENTR and certain registries. Transferred to CENTR, for decision during next week (beginning 27 September 1999).

TLD-33.3 [Chair] Request information from registries on whether they are prepared to make their data available for pilot project using HARMONIC interface. NIC-FR is making contact directly. OBE; closed.

TLD-33.4 [Chair] Place Future Direction of TLD-WG on Agenda for RIPE-34 and stimulate preparatory discussion on mailing list. Done; closed.

TLD-34.1 [Chair] Ensure loose ends are tidied up, in particular by alerting inheritors of work areas and action items, and by taking care of minutes.

Niall thanked everyone who supported the TLD Working Group in any way; wether by participation or taking the minutes at the meetings. And he thanked the RIPE NCC staff for the background suppport that were always provided.

Christopher Wilkinson stated that we all owe Niall a heart devoted thanks. 2 years ago we were in desparate need for a vocal point for policy for TLD issues and we didn't have one, Niall volunteered. It is not often that a RIPE BoF results in the creation of a new international organization within 2 years.

Christopher also wanted to draw attention to the membership and election in the ICANN structure and organization. The next stage is the creation of an open at large individual membership for the ICANN organization. ICANN is looking for at least 5000 initial individual members from day one. He wanted to urge the RIPE membership to join the ICANN at large membership as individuals. That is where they're responsibilities now lie.

Rob noted that when CENTR starts a new Working Group, we have offered them to have regular meetings at the same time and at same facilities as the RIPE meeting. This in order to be as open and transparant as possible. This is an action item for Rob, he will follow this personally in the next few months.

Charter The LIR WG deals with issues that concern LIRs for example, Local IR operation, and the local implementation of RIPE policies and procedures are discussed here.

http://www.ripe.net/wg/lir/index.html

How do we establish policy? - In the LIR WG - Open to anyone to attend not just to LIRs - By concensus

There was consencus that the proc. Described was open enough and didn't need to be changed in any major way.

Task force for documenting the existing policy process - announce the charter of the task force to the mailinglist - interested parties may volunteer - a draft will be posted to LIR WG for discussion - a second draft will be based on that discussion - the document will be endorsed by consensus at RIPE 35

Task force to define final Address council selection procedure - announce the charter of the taskforce to the mailinglist - interested parties may volunteer - a draft will be posted for discussion - a second draft will be based on that discussion - The document will be endorsed by consensus at RIPE 35

Remember: it's your forum, be there! Special thanks to RIPE NCC, keep up the good work!

Rob added this was a reminder for himself: a couple of actions which have to be done by our new address council delegates.

The first one is that we should announce to the world that we have 3 council members. The 3 elected members should figure out among themselves how the 1,2 and 3 year seats will be distributed.

A small discussion was to be held that day on how the address council members will be reporting to the RIPE community at large.

The 3 council members had (within the next days after the RIPE 34 meeting) to think about a procedure for having a call for nominations for 1 ICANN board director. This action would be closed during the ICANN meeting at 2nd November.

Full minutes from the RIPE 34 LIR working group meeting can be found at: http://www.ripe.net/ripe/wg/lir/r34-lir.html

Administrivia - The future of this Working Group -> wants to continue! - New Working Group chair -> Brad Knowles has volunteered

For ayone also interested in becoming chair of Netnews WG: the deadline is 10th October 1999.

Brad Knowles wanted to add something about NHNS: not only are we working to try to get the ISC to use NHNS to maintain the hierarchic list for the big 8, we are also working with them to see if we can get the NHNS tools included with the INN distribution as a standard part of the package.

If you for example, try to run INN sinc to pick up the big 8 you can automatically work with these tools. We are working to get these tools encorporated within diablo. We will see if we can get in contact with the maintainers of other newspackages and have them do the same.

Fearghas also announced that security at IX's will be discussed during the next meeting.

Q: Wilfried: with regards to the internet exchange IPv6 address distribution, he was grateful that the EIX WG touched on it. He was also relieved to find out that the recommendation will probably be not do distribute IPv6 addresses in the framework of an exchange point. He wanted to know if EIX WG intends to provid this feedback to the editors of the relevant RFC or do they intend an update to this RFC. It might not be a good idea to have information in an RFC which is contrary to what a regional operations community would recommend these days.

A: Fearghas: we will provide feedback to IPv6 WG, they will get that back to RFC's.

David: stated that as chairman of IPv6, he will take it up with authors of the aformentioned RFC's, to see what they have to say about it.

Keith had a suggestion for Rob, he felt that it is a good idea if we had EIX and IPv6 Working Groups not scheduled in parallel next time. EIX should also not overlap with the Routing WG.

David stated at the end of his summary that sisco is now providing the beta version of their IPv6 implementation for their routers to everybody.

EOF Tutorial? ------------- Rob: informed the plenary session that EOF turned out to be completely different from what everyone thought it would be. Rob got some friendly remarks about the presentations that were given instead and stated that we might turn this from a disaster into a surprise feature.

Dfk: wanted to propose a new activity related to security issues in operations.

We have had some things on various mailinglists about operational coordination in order to track down denial of service attacks and similar things. That has not led to a BoF this time, but Dfk thought it would be a good idea to have a BoF during the next ripe meeting, as some people are getting worried. Perhaps other coordination aspects can be discussed here as well.

Dfk suggested that people who are interested in this should organize a BoF for the next meeting. Dfk he stated that if people want to talk to him, send an e-mail. A draft charter will be needed to form this BoF. The draft charter will be discussed on a mailinglist which will be set-up soon by the RIPE NCC.

Wilfried mentioned that there was an activity for a while within the framework of the European research network. This was not succesful, he personally really wants the RIPE community to come up with an infrastructure to deal with these issues, such as operational recommendations etc., and then find out if this is something that can stand on its own legs. He stressed that he was really grateful to Dfk for bringing it up.

- 9. - Next meetings

Offers were made by Daniele Bovio to host the May 2001 RIPE meeting in Paris, France and by GARR/INFN to host the May 2002 meeting in Bologna, Italy.

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